"This is the Defeat of Ronald Reagan": Leftist Candidate Wins in El Salvador

Amy Goodman: In El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, of the former rebel FMLN party, has won the country's presidential election, ending two decades of conservative rule. Funes won 51 percent of the vote to 49 percent for Rodrigo Avila of the ruling right-wing ARENA party. He conceded defeat late on Sunday.

ARENA had won every presidential election since the end of El Salvador's brutal civil war eighteen years ago. The FMLN was a coalition of rebel guerrillas who fought the U.S.-backed military government during almost two decades in which more than 70,000 people died. Tens of thousands, the majority of those people, died at the hands of the Salvadoran military or paramilitary forces.

Funes is a former television journalist who reported on the years of the conflict and is the first FMLN presidential candidate who is not a former combatant. In his victory speech, he stressed his moderate policies during his campaign and says he intends to maintain good relations with the United States.

President-elect Mauricio Funes: [translated] To strengthen international relations and implement an independent exterior policy based on protection and the boosting the national interest, the integration of Central America and the strengthening of relations with the United States will be aspects of priority on our foreign policy agenda.

Amy Goodman: The Obama government has assured Salvadorans it would work with any leader elected, a departure from the Bush administration, which in 2004 threatened to cut off aid to El Salvador if the FMLN won.

Close U.S. ties saw El Salvador keep troops in Iraq longer than any other Latin American country, with the last of its 6,000 soldiers returning last week. El Salvador had also become a hub of regional cooperation with Washington in the so-called drug war. The country's economy depends on billions of dollars sent home by 2.5 million Salvadorans who live in the United States.

We go now to San Salvador to speak with Roberto Lovato. He is a contributing associate editor with New America Media and a frequent contributor to The Nation magazine. He blogs at ofamerica.wordpress.com. He met with the President-elect, Mauricio Funes, last night and interviewed him. Roberto Lovato joins us now via Democracy Now! video stream.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Roberto. Can you tell us the climate now in San Salvador?

Roberto Lovato: I would just say -- I'll just quote a song that says, "Y que venga la alegria a lavar el sufrimiento" -- "Let the joy come and wash away the suffering." It's something on an order I've never seen in my life. As a child of Salvadoran immigrants and as someone who's spent time here and as someone who saw the Obama experience, I really can't tell you what this is like, when you're talking about ending not just the ARENA party's rule, but you're talking about 130 years of oligarchy and military dictatorship, by and large, that's just ended last night. You're talking about $6 billion that the United States used to defeat the FMLN, as you mentioned earlier. You're talking about one of the most formidable -- a formerly political military, now political forces, in the hemisphere, showing the utter failure of not just the ARENA party but of somebody in particular, too, who has a special place in many of our hearts: Ronald Reagan. This is the defeat of Ronald Reagan, nothing less.

AG: Explain what you mean.

RL: Ronald Reagan -- well, you mentioned those 70,000 dead. If there's a single person responsible for the death squad apparatus that pursued many of our family members, that pursued some of us, that killed -- according to the United Nations, 95 percent of all the 70,000 to 80,000 people killed were killed by their own government. Ronald Reagan really, really started us along the road to the -- what's even called in Iraq now "the Salvador Option." And so, $6 billion -- it cost Ronald Reagan and the US $6 billion to try to destroy the FMLN.